What are the top ten heavy metal bands?
Metal is a diverse genre, and a lot of hardcore metalheads will have debates about what the genre actually covers these days. Below are my favourites covering a variety of the sub-genres and some album recommendations to check out.
"How would you define metal?"
That's a tough one, as there are so many sub-genres and styles. The musical ranges from slow to fast, and simple to complex. The vocals from operatic to guttural.
Broadly speaking metal is a form of escapism, compared to punk for example which lyrically is grounded in real world problems/emotions and politics. There are metal bands that are go that way, but the majority are interested in history, fantasy, the macabre and shock.
Musically it's fair to say that Led Zeppelin are a pioneer of heavy rock, from which metal branched out from. What metal artists did to separate themselves from the likes of Zeppelin was remove the more overt blues influences, up the aggression in the tone and rhythm and in many cases up the complexity.
1. Iron Maiden (Traditional Heavy Metal)
Classic era - Powerslave, Number of the Beast
Modern era - Brave New World, Dance of Death
2. Devin Townsend (Progressive Metal)
Albums - Ocean Machine, Epicloud.
3. Testament (Thrash Metal)
Classic Era - The New Order, Practice What Your Preach
Modern Era - The Formation of Damnation
4. Judas Priest (Traditional Heavy Metal)
Albums - Screaming For Vengeance, Defenders of the Faith, Painkiller
5. Paradise Lost (Gothic Metal)
Album - Draconian Times
6. Blind Guardian (Power Metal)
Albums - Nightfall in Middle Earth, Imaginations From The Other Side, Follow The Blind
7. Carcass (Grindcore)
Albums - Heartwork, Surgical Steel
8. Black Sabbath (Doom Metal)
Albums - S/T, Paranoid, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Heaven and Hell
9. Rammstein (Industrial Metal)
Albums - Mutter, Sehnsucht
10. Primordial (Celtic Metal)
Albums - The Gathering Wilderness, To The Nameless Dead
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